Elijah Wood

Performer for Our Time

Huck Finn
(1993)

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Huck Finn (1993)
Elijah Wood as "Huckleberry Finn"

Edward C. Patterson, site owner
Annie Graham, copy editor

We first meet Huck Finn in Voice Over. A large portion of the script is narrative, with Elijah spinning and bridging the story together in Mark Twain’s marvelous humor and intonation. A woodcut of Huck morphs into Elijah Wood. (Disney uses woodcuts in Oliver Twist also. I checked a first edition of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, thinking it might contain this particular woodcut. But it did not). Elijah Wood immediately presents us with a humorous, energetic tyke fighting and scrapping on the riverbank. We don’t know why he’s fighting or even whom. But his friends cheer him on and he is definitely fighting one of the town’s gentry sons. Although he’s winning the fight, he melts into a different mode once he sees Papp’s distinguished foot imprint in the riverbank.

We next see Huck consulting Jim (Courtney Vance), to have his fortune told. Here we get a sure kid (he has no fear in the slave quarter) and one that believes in magic and spirits. We next see him with his civilizing women folk (Miss Watson and the Widow Douglas) and here we sense the crux of Huck’s desperate struggle to be his own person. But he also is easily led by his own folly. His little last fling with his friends causes him to be caught by his brutal father. The pageantry of moods that Elijah Wood displays in this quick series of scenes range from whimsical (a big belch after dinner), minxy (meowing to his friends), and terrorized (the struggle with Papp).

Huck’s fight with his father is desperate. But Elijah manages to craft it so it doesn’t become a parent’s cruelty to their child. Huck is very adult, defending himself with a crock of bull and a gun. He uses strategy to outwit his father and the mock death scene is delivered with the resolve of an escaped convict from Devil’s Island (only in this case, he escapes to an island). Once on the river, we get, in voice over: "Now that I was dead, I could do anything I wanted."

Two consistent elements prevail in Elijah’s performance of Huck Finn—his mellow Southern accent, which ennobles Mark Twain’s highly philosophical humor; and, what else, those eyes, which play every scene in an engaging manner. This reviewer has often said that Elijah Wood could have been a major silent screen actor, whose facial expressions support every line (his and others) and every situation with intelligent application.

"Hells Bells, Jim," he said, as he meets up with the runaway slave. His horror upon hearing that Jim has broken the law is genuine. We never doubt it. But he has a soft spot. Jim wants family. Huck, down deep, wants family. So, he agrees to help the slave flee. The scene with Frances Conroy (future star of Six Feet Under) with Elijah dressed as a girl and pilfering (borrowing) goods and picking up news, is a delight. Although altered from the novel (where Huck is discovered by the way he catches a ball rather than how he throws one), the simpering high pitched voice is very funny. It is also the only scene in an Elijah Wood film that he cross dresses; although, it was merely supporting the scheme.

Elijah continues to dominate the film. This film is wall to wall Elijah Wood (no cameo or Where’s Waldo a la Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind or Black and White). The storm and River vessel sequence has him scampering about a sinking ship—even sliding along the floor (although not the famous Elijah Wood slide used in later films). Elijah using an internal dialog to justify his decision deftly handles the development of how Huck feels about slavery and his decision to turn Jim in. Of course, Jim knows how to affect him as he paddles on a log across the river to the bounty hunters. The whole "spinning the yarn" about his family dying is precious. (He keeps getting caught in his own lie and manages to imaginatively continue the fib until it actually becomes plausible—what novelists do). I must mention that the full size film frames where Elijah Wood mans the rudder of the raft is a precursor of a future character—one, Frodo Baggins of the Shire.

The last lesson on the river, in the fog, is Jim’s "point taken" where he states the case against slavery. Elijah gets to have a mock sword fight and gets dumped in the river when a Steamboat strikes the raft. With this lesson implanted, the next section (which is normally omitted from most Huck Finn movies) helps intensify the character. The plantation of the Grangerfords, who are in a blood feud with the Shepherdsons, is the meatiest part of the film. Huck gets a quick and instant family, a new best friend and the chance at some comforts. Comfort makes poor fodder for social justice. Elijah’s response to slavery—at first amazed (remember he was sheltered from the rich plantation life as a po’ white trash boy from Hannibal), and then in complete denial. When he realizes that his own selfishness caused Jim to be whipped, the shell cracks and provides Elijah Wood a stretch of acting to grab our hearts. He knows well enough in order to make this passionate cry workable he must set us up in the more childlike essence of the character. So, now he becomes a kid having fun; then suddenly, he sees Jim’s welts and realizes the pain:

"If you think I feel bad—well you’re wrong. If you think I’m gonna apologize to a slave—a runaway slave at that—well HA!" Once the anger (anger at himself) incriminates, the gush occurs (perfectly timed and absolutely engaging). "I didn’t mean for this to happen Jim. It was the worst thing I’ve done in my life. And I’m real sorry Jim. Honest, I am." Jim gives us the upper cut with "You be still my best and only friend, Huck Finn." No dry eye in the house. Elijah counts—one, two, three, four—disengages and returns the character to character. "Okay. Alright. Enough of this slop!"

Of course, the next sequence, where the feud explodes and he gets to witness the death of his new friend Billy (Huck’s first real brush with death, since his mother’s), Elijah knows not to cry. No anti-climax here or descent into the slop again. Instead he uses his expert facial expressions for sadness, agony and then, despair, before he pronounces his words over his friend, as if he were an adult delivering an eulogy.

Back on the river, they come across the most famous episode in the novel—the adventure of the King of Bilgewater and the Duke (expertly played by Jason Robards, Jr. and Robbie Coltrane). The sequence is very Twain and deeply cynical (that is deeply Twain), a study in human folly, gullibility and greed. Elijah establishes that he is actually intrigued by the two grifters and their bilking scheme. He helps and, in one scene (of so many), he dives into the gold just as readily as the crooks. His ability to tell stretchers is amplified. BUT, and there’s always a BUT, he knows the scheme is wrong, because the gullible Wilks daughters are actually nice folk, and again Jim is threatened, this time with lynching. So, the monkey in Elijah Wood springs from closet to piano to graveyard to auction block keeping the intriguing thread of the sequence alive and interesting. The only flaw (and it’s a script flaw) is the length of the so-called proving scene, where we descent into vaudeville, the story sagging. Fortunately, Elijah picks up the pace once that scene has run its course.

When Huck is shot, I’m not too sure that Elijah made a convincing prat fall with his wound. But he more than makes up for it at the lynching, where he delivers his lines on his back hovering between this world and the next.

Jim says: "Don’t cry for me, Mr. Finn."

Elijah answers, "You’re the best friend I ever had."

Jim: "You’re the only friend I ever had."

"Jim! You can’t take him. He’s all I got."

Then he passes out and he wakes up in a white linen setting not unlike the two he would wake up in The Fellowship of the Ring and The Return of the King. I wonder whether Peter Jackson was influenced by Huck’s angelic awakening to inspire Frodo’s safe havens. From here, it’s a quick ride to the end with a happy resolution. Huck Finn, not willing to be civilized, cuts loose across the river bank following the call of the Steamboat—much like the genius author of this great American novel.

It is hard to imagine a better performance than this from any actor, let alone a child actor (I prefer juvenile actor). But we must remember that The Adventures of Huck Finn is Elijah Wood’s 10^th film. He was a veteran by this time and certainly proved he could inhabit a character and make it his own. Huck Finn can easily become a cliche. The novel has certainly been served well on film before (and poorly too). But to my mind, this portrayal of the very adult lead role is definitive. This is the character that was banned throughout Southern libraries deep into the mid-1950’s. The script did wise to omit Tom Sawyer and any connection to what is to my mind a child’s book. Because, Huck Finn is an adult masterpiece and has been played here by a true artist, who was now looking forward to many more great performances like The War, the next year. Anyone who wants to know the promise of Elijah Wood should explore this film and his performance. Elijah Wood certainly has never broken that promise.